Coinbase halts Bitcoin SV trading after yet another 51% attack

Bitcoin SV is in trouble once again after Coinbase announced that it will be halting BSV trading on the platform. This update came on the back of a string of attacks the network has been facing since late June. As per the announcement made by the exchange,

“Due to the 51% attack that has occurred on BSV today we are stopping all BSV trading.”

Bitcoin SV was the target of a massive 51% attack early on Tuesday, an attack which was called “the largest since launch” by Blockchair developer Nikita Zhavoronkov. He further claimed on Twitter that the reorganization was 100 blocks deep and wiped out 570k transactions.

The attack was first brought to the community’s notice by CoinMetrics’ Lucas Nuzzi. Arguing that “some serious hashing power” was unleashed on the network early on Tuesday, he revealed that up to three versions of the chain were being mined simultaneously across pools.

Coinmetrics later confirmed that the firm’s own blockchain security monitoring tool FARUM identified the attack.

All of our FARUM nodes witnessed a deep reorg with a max depth of 14 blocks.

No further reorganization events have been witnessed, but there are still synchronization conflicts taking place on major mining pools. pic.twitter.com/aM6FoWOKke

— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) August 3, 2021

The Bitcoin Association also confirmed the incident on Twitter, recommending node operators to mark the fraudulent chain as invalid. It’s worth noting, however, that at the time of writing, the Association had released yet another statement on the same.

It said,

“…. believes that this is the same attacker that previously initiated block re-organisation attacks against the BSV network on June 24 and July 1, 6 & 9, 2021.”

Coinbase’s action made waves in the community. However, such steps are perhaps routine for the network now. In the past, BSV has been dropped by top exchanges like Gemini and Binance. It also saw several exchanges block withdrawals and deposits for the asset as liquidity providers suspended access to the token’s liquidity. This was preceded by more attacks in the last week of June and the first week of July.

As far as Coinbase is concerned, the exchange is yet to reveal when it might restart trading services for Bitcoin SV. With many in the community at sixes and sevens, it’s unlikely it’s going to be anytime soon.